[tex-live] comma versus colon in texmf.cnf

[David Kastrup]

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) writes:

> Hi David,
>
>     That way scripts adding material to environment variables will even
>     work when they are using a different convention from the one used
>     already in the environment variable.
>
> I see your logic, but it's not something I can make a priority to
> implement myself.  A patch would be welcome.
>
>     With the sole exception that a colon preceded by a just a _single_
>     letter is considered part of the drive name.
>
> On Unix, IMHO it would be necessary to check if the directory exists,
> e.g.,
> TEXINPUTS=c:
>
> should first check if a directory named `c' exists, and if so, proceed
> as usual ...

I don't think that single-letter relative directories are really worth
bothering for.  It would be likely more important to have a way to
precheck a Windows setup: I have indeed created directories called
C:\I\ don\'t\ believe\ this/
or similar under Unix in order to test some Windows-relevant scripts.

Anyway, one could still offer kpathseasep settings of colon, semicolon
and mixed.  That way, purists could still switch back to "colon", but
with the problem that a path like

~/tex;

will not work when some system-agnostic scripts uses that kind of
convention.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum